


Trial by Fire

by MxAlex



Series: The Gracious Gang of Gotham [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Age Changes, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - No Capes, Gen, Kid Fic, Minor Character Death, tGGoG'verse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-05-27 18:11:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6294586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MxAlex/pseuds/MxAlex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes forty-six days for Bruce Wayne's world to end, and forty-seven for him to discover he has to wake up the next morning. Or; in which money is stolen, homes are lost, parents are taken and the trials that change us the most burn the hottest.</p><hr/><p><strong>Age/Fusion/No Capes AU:</strong> Growing up half on the streets, Bruce Wayne and Kate Kane find themselves collecting angry orphans, dysfunctional survivors, snarky juvenile delinquents and reckless teenagers to build their suffering city a motley militia team of penniless but clever and dedicated vigilantes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trial by Fire

**Author's Note:**

> **Series Notes:** this is an episode in a longer series - you will need to read the other stories for this to make sense. If you wish to subscribe, do so on the [series page](http://archiveofourown.org/series/413683) instead of on this story, as each episode is posted as a new work in the series, instead of as a new chapter.
> 
>  **Story Notes:** thank you to [Zappy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Zappy) and [Twisted_Magic](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Twisted_Magic/) for beta help! I apologize that this is a bit late - it was one of _those_ weeks. The second (and final) part of this episode will be posted on the beginning of May.
> 
>  **Warnings (Ch.1):** extensive emotional stress of a child.

Here’s how it goes.

In the multiverse theory, there are an infinity number of possible universes. For every event, there is every variation. For every variation, there is a world; a self-contained universe.

Barbara Gordon, eleven years old and wise beyond all decades, explains it like this; perhaps your father wears a blue shirt instead of green on the day you’re born. Maybe you eat cereal instead of toast for breakfast. With every option, a split happens and a new universe is born, one for each choice. Most of the time, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them because so many are so _similar_.

But then sometimes they are very, very different.

It is thought that there is a version of events that is more common than others. In one world - in a hundred, thousand worlds but still just one - Bruce Wayne still has a family, after it ends.

For every world where that happens, there is nine others in which this family may not be there, but at least he knows _kindness_.

And for every ten in which he knows this, there are ninety in which he does not.

Statistically, every possibility exists.

Statistically, the chances of you getting a world that works out for you are almost nil.

* * *

The 27th of September 1982 dawns with a soft but cold edge that speaks of the changing season. Weak rays of early morning sunlight worm their way through heavy curtains to grace the halls of Wayne Manor with a glow that lights up the ancient tapestries and paintings.

Almost nobody is awake, the staff having not yet arrived and Thomas and Martha Wayne still fast asleep. The only ones currently up and about are Alfred Pennyworth, the family’s butler and chief of staff, and one Bruce Wayne, age eight.

Bruce should not be up.

This is a rule he’s had for as long as he can remember - _for goodness’ sake Bruce, just sleep when it’s dark and stay in bed until we wake up_ \- but something far more powerful than his parents’ wishes has driven him from sleep and sheets for as long as he could remember.

Being awake before six is neither uncommon or new. It is simply the way things are.

Still, Bruce makes an effort to be silent, slipping through shadows with a natural ease, watching his feet on the noisy floorboards and avoiding the areas Alfred may pass through on his morning rounds. The Manor may be exactly the same now as it is during the day, but that doesn’t stop him from enjoying the silent, one-man game; there is a hunt afoot, and with or without prey, he will participate.

This particular Monday morning, however, is not nearly as delightful and easygoing as the ones that have come before, and he finds himself pausing near the library, trying to shake the miserable feeling that clings to the air.

His parents had always told him to trust his gut feelings, and today he finds his stomach in knots. Something is going to happen; he doesn’t know what, and he doesn’t know when, but it is going to hit and it is going to hurt.

Bruce breathes in the faint smell of leather and lemon, a combination of the Waynes’ extensive book collection and Alfred's favourite cleaning solution. There is nothing out of the ordinary in this hallway, or the one he’d come out of or the one before that, but he can’t shake the _feeling_. The feeling of heavy dread and sorrow that has no source.

He presses his hand to the library door and peers inside the vast library. It is almost impossible to see anything, the heavy curtains keeping the sun from damaging the ancient and delicate pages. But he’s seen the darkened room without so much as a flashlight a hundred times over, and he knows the patterns of soft chairs and old desks as well as he knows his room. There is nothing out of place here and since the family has no expected visitors to the collection today, it is unlikely that there will be any trouble here either.

He contemplates the merits of resampling the fauna section or finishing off that delightful book on architecture his mother had recently acquired as he steps towards the shelves, when the silent Manor is disrupted by the distant chime of the doorbell.

Bruce pauses, hand half risen to the _J_ authors of the nature collection. They never have visitors this early, and he would know - you have to be crazy or at work to be awake right now.

Usually Bruce would have returned to the books and spared no thought to the mysterious visitor - he had long since learned that most unannounced guests to the Manor were not the nice kind - but the feeling of _wrong_ still hangs in the air, and honestly, it was all just downright strange.

Bruce could never pass up a good mystery anyway.

He doesn’t beat Alfred to the entrance foyer - though he does arrive in time to see Alfred lift the in-house phone and call to the master bedroom for his parents to wake up. He slides into his favourite small space between a pedestal with a horse sculpture and the staircase bannister, close enough that he can hear everything, but far enough out of the way that almost nobody ever sees him.

The man standing in the foyer beside Alfred is skinny, dressed in an ill-fitting suit and looking like he’s about to sweat himself to bits. Bruce has never seen anyone that nervous before and it makes the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. Even _mother_ didn't scare anyone that much, and she’s the scariest person Bruce knows.

It’s dark and early enough that Alfred doesn’t think to check the usual places, and so he is able to stay in his corner, listening to whispered conversation and trying to make out what is being said. A few minutes later, his hiding spot is bypassed by his father, Thomas, still in his dressing gown and pyjamas. The head of the Wayne house seemed to be aiming for an irritated look, though he’s mostly just achieving a confused and tired expression instead.

Martha Wayne may have been the scariest aristocat this side of the Atlantic Ocean, but her husband’s only advantage is that he was considered too sweet to be messed with. Thomas Wayne had never managed to appear more than deeply disappointed in his life.

Even their visitor looks like he’s about to kick a puppy, Bruce notes. Upsetting Thomas Wayne just wasn’t done, and this man seems like he would have preferred to have quit altogether and left, than say what he’s about to say.

These are the thoughts that were going through Bruce’s head, on the early morning of Monday, September 27th, 1982. He is eight, the world seems just the same as it always has been, and he has a mystery to watch unfold.

And then the stranger says _I am sorry, but your money is gone_.

After that - well, after that, the world doesn’t seem so right after all.

* * *

It will take Bruce Wayne six years, seven months and fifteen days exactly, to learn of the exact circumstances that brought this upon his peaceful life.

It will not be a comfort.

* * *

Here is how it starts.

_Mr. and Mrs. Wayne, I am sorry to inform you, but some time during the night, your family was the target of sabotage._

Here is what he heard, both heart-breaking and confusing and _strange_ and seemingly impossible but apparently not.

_Your bank accounts have been emptied. Your positions and privileges at Wayne Enterprises have been removed. Your medical license has been revoked. Your birth certificates, passports, driver’s licenses and every form of identification you may have had are gone from government record. Legally, you don’t exist and you have nothing._

Such a horrible thing to say. He wants to open his mouth and say _I am still here, I am still real_ , either in protest of his own existence or in comfort to parents who may have lost everything else, but he doesn’t.

And part of him regrets that forever.

* * *

Later - not as late as you’d think but certainly not _now_ \- Bruce meets a boy named Dick.

Dick tells him, later still, that the last memories are the strongest. Dick tells him, maybe nine or ten years old himself, that he wakes up hearing the _snap_ of his parents’ necks in his ears. He won’t cry when he says this, because Dick has already been told that boys don’t cry, and surely an orphanage is better then the circus anyway.

Bruce won’t cry either, but that doesn’t stop him from thinking long and hard that he can’t remember much beyond the feeling of cold skin and hot blood.

* * *

After the lawyer comes - _September 27th 1982, forty-six days before the world ends and doesn’t -_ they find out that they are not the only ones - the great, old families of Gotham, the richest of the richest, are penniless and directionless just as quickly. Most of them had been powerful enough that they had never needed to work for money but they had still had their jobs, their ways of contributing.

The sabotage hits them just as hard and just as fast. The Kanes are removed from the political arenas they had stood in for centuries. The few remaining Cobblepots suddenly don’t have business licenses. The Arkhams can’t treat their patients. Roger Elliot misplaces his pharmaceutical degree.

In addition to this, there is a very long period of time - perhaps a few hours or days but it stretches like months, _years_ in Bruce’s young mind - where he is absolutely convinced that somehow he is going to die. That someone is coming for them, that someone is going to step out onto the street in front of them and shoot them all dead. He doesn’t know how this idea worms its way in, but it infests him like a parasite and no matter how much time he spends in the shower, soaking up the heat and trying to scrub the thought away before the water is shut off, the feeling doesn’t leave.

Bruce isn’t the only one. He can see it in the tense line of Alfred’s spine, waiting for a fight that hasn’t yet arrived. He can see it in his father’s hands, shaking and unsure for the first time in all his years because Thomas doesn’t know how to _fix this_. He can see it in his mother’s eyes, some long-slumbering terror awakened by the clanging of an ancient bell, beset with anger and rage like he has never seen before in his life.

Martha Wayne is just as familiar with rage as her son will be one day - but Bruce doesn't _know that_ right now and thus, it is of no use to anyone.

One day - _one week, four days later_ \- Bruce wakes up and his cousin Kate is sitting on the edge of his bed. Her shoulders are hunched, her face turned away. Her clothes are wrinkled as if she’s slept in them and her hair is tangled and dull in a way that says she hasn’t washed it in days.

When she hears him moving, she turns around and her eyes are almost as red as her hair, the skin around them swollen and dark like she’s been staying awake crying. But for now her gaze is dry, diamond-hard and just as sharp. There is no hope there, but it is not a hopeless look.

“Three hundred years,” Kate says, with a voice half-cracked from grief and _fury_. “A hundred years before the founding fathers even met each other. Two hundred years since then. Back then, this city was a tiny port for smugglers and settlers trying to get laid before they moved on. It was _nothing_.”

This is a story Bruce knows. It’s a story his father told him, a story his mother told him, and a story he hopes he’ll live long enough to tell his own children.

“It should have remained nothing,” she whispers, still looking right at him with an intensity that threatens to scorch his bones. “It should have _died_ as nothing. But then your ancestors decided Boston just wasn’t cutting it and came here instead, probably still half-seasick from ditching England. They bought up a ton of land, got themselves a lot of cheap labour, and a couple of good architects and made _that_.”

One finger, the nail broken and chewed to pieces, lifts and points out the window. The dawn light is soft between the open curtains, and even laying in bed, Bruce can see the distant, beautiful edge of Gotham’s skyline, towering above the sea in a last defiant act against more things than either of them can be bothered to count.

“Three hundred years.” Her voice is as strong as the waves crashing over the shoreline. “All of us, the great families, we came together and we built… we built _Gotham_. And we kept her alive as best we could. Through war. Through hardship. Through despair. For _centuries_.”

Words aren’t coming to him as well as they should have been, haven’t been for a while now - since that early morning in late September, really - so instead he reaches and lays a hand on top of hers. Tries to say _our families are bound to this stone,_ tries to say _our bloodlines promised to protect so long ago_ , tries to say _we are too young and too old for this_ _all at once_.

He fails at all of that, but means it all the same.

“My family is leaving.”

And suddenly, the bed isn’t half as stable as it could be. The _world_ isn’t half as stable as it could be and it was already pretty unstable. The air isn’t taking to his lungs as well as it should and somewhere between laying down and sitting up he thinks maybe his heart just _breaks_.

There are tears now, in Kate’s eyes, and she wipes them away with a hand that shakes, chipped nail polish contrasting against skin paled by grief. “We have relatives in New York, they weren’t targeted in all of this. Mm-most of us are ll-leaving, gg-going there, st-starting over.”

And perhaps there are words for that, perhaps there is grief for that. Maybe he’ll look back on this moment years from now and be able to say _I knew what was going on_ , _I know what to say now._

But Bruce Wayne is eight years old, angry and almost friendless, trapped on a train he shouldn’t be on, heading for a future nobody ever planned for.

And it’s _terrifying_.

* * *

They last two weeks, or there abouts.

Two weeks after the lawyer, two weeks of the food slowly disappearing, the stored hard cash running low, of the Wayne Enterprises board turning their backs on the family that created them, of the other aristocrats ripping apart high society in a desperate bid to fill the void the old families had left. Two weeks of public clamor, of government red tape, of crying late at night, of the media going from sympathetic to questioning to _hateful_.

The power, the water, the heat had all been scheduled to be paid at the beginning of October and they _didn’t have the money_. One evening Bruce is padding down the halls in socked feet - feeling like he’s sick even though his parents have checked and there isn’t a damn thing wrong - when the lights just… turn off.

They don’t even flicker, there isn’t a _sound_. He’s just trying to keep it together, trying not to think that maybe Kate, the only friend he’s got left after that fiasco with the Elliot kid, after Harvey Dent, is going to _leave him behind_ , when the lights just go out.

He pauses in the hall, considers his options -panic, rage, pretending it’s not _happening_ \- and flicks the light switch on the wall a couple of times.

Nothing, nothing, _nothing_.

“Bruce?” His father’s voice is distant, calm. But it’s calm in the way his voice held steady when they were told they probably couldn’t have more children when Bruce was five. It’s calm in the same way that his voice was soothing when Bruce fell through the lawn into a cave and broke his leg at age six. It’s calm in the way that his voice was low when a stranger turned up in the foyer bleeding to death at age seven. It’s calm in the way that Bruce’s father may be under the impression that the world is ending and he can’t do _anything to stop it_.

Bruce closes his eyes, opens them again. The halls of Wayne Manor have stood for almost three centuries and he has the sudden thought that maybe he doesn’t belong anymore.

“Bruce!” This time it’s Alfred, with a layer of genuine emotion in his voice that the Waynes are not inclined to naturally include. It’s such an unusual thing to hear in a household defined by self-control, something he almost doesn’t understand but pretends he does anyway.

“Please,” Bruce whispers, to the walls and the halls and the paintings of people he’s never met but that he _knows_ in some strange way. “Please, I’m so scared and I shouldn’t be.”

But if anything hears him, it doesn’t answer.

* * *

The morning after the power goes off, Martha and Thomas Wayne go to see Lucius Fox.

In actuality, it’s not just them; Bruce is dragged behind, some expressionless edge to him that just plain _scares_ his parents. Martha’s sister Gayle Kane and her husband Frank tag along with the faces of condemned people, and their two children, Bruce’s cousins, Kate and Bette don’t look all that great either.

It’s a regular old family reunion and none of them want to be there, for entirely different reasons.

Lucius, at least, is kind and sympathetic. He’s already got a few years under his belt as one of the managers of Wayne Enterprises’ Research and Development division and the Waynes have known him personally since three and a half year old Bruce got past security and made off with an electric drill. The Foxes’ apartment sits squarely in Midtown, not far from the grand clock tower that sits in Gotham’s exact centre, all fairly middle class for a young family making over a million every year.

His wife Tanya welcomes them with in a look, a touch, a way that says _I am sorry_ so much louder than words. They all hang their coats up in the hall, and Gayle and Frank try to look thankful in a way that says they appreciate being invited, but they have never stepped foot before in an apartment this small or full of children’s toys.

It’s Bruce who hangs back, falling into a crouch as Tamara, the Foxes’ oldest child comes stumbling forward, barely two years old and already eager and bright in a way that reminds him of Bette when she was that young.

“Hey Tam,” he says, accepting the stuffed elephant he is handed. “How’s your little brother?”

Tamara just laughs in delight at this, a big smile on her dark face. Even at her age, she hasn’t started talking yet but her intent is clear when she reaches for Kate, beckoning for the older girl to follow.

Kate looks like she’d love nothing better than to hide away and forget everything that’s going on, but she does move, taking her younger sister Bette along with her.

They get dragged into the sitting room while the adults step into the kitchen. Tamara points enthusiastically to her baby brother Lucas who is laying on his stomach on the floor, surrounded by more toys and staring around at the bright colours with an intense gaze. Barely three months old, not even strong enough to properly push himself up or move, but even now that quick Fox intelligence was clear; the combination of Lucius and Tanya, two of Gotham’s greatest engineers.

There’s a part of Bruce that wants to lean back and listen to what the adults are talking about, but he’s heard so much of money and politics lately that when Tamara points to the ground, he just drops himself down, Kate and Bette following his lead. There is peace here, he thinks, a calm peace that almost numbs the painful throb in his head, and does he ever need that.

Peace is not something he fully understands yet. _Peace_ has never had a place in a life defined by helping others; he has never known peace at nurse stations, waiting for his father to come off shift, still smelling of blood from surgery. Peace has never factored into a hundred, a thousand charity events, holding the hands of the sick and the poor and knowing he can never truly remove their pain. Peace does not exist in the walls of Wayne Enterprises, where all focus is on solving problems and those problems are _terrible_.

He knows of peace as a solution so many ask for and none can obtain. His mother had once said that peace was the language of the ignorant, and his father had said that peace was so much more complicated than that. Either way, Bruce was not made with peace in mind and the fact that he wants it now only confuses him.

He thinks maybe he knew peace, before this. That maybe what he had lived through before this had been at least as close as he’d ever get to it.

He squeezes the toy Tamara gave him in the hall and thinks of how much the world has changed and how much it has not.

He watches Bette, five years old and so confused, begin to cry silently in a stranger’s apartment. Kate holds her sister’s hand but there is really only so much she can do.

He listens to Lucas’ excited babble and tries not to meet Tam’s gaze, too smart and too questioning for her age.

Bruce Wayne cannot see the future; perhaps if he could, he would have turned away, ran out the door even, told someone what was to come. Had he known the importance of these five - himself, Kate and Bette Kane and Tamara and Lucas Fox, the first to meet, the first to bond - perhaps he would have acted.

But how could he have possibly known?

Here’s what he _does_ know.

Less than two hours after they get there, someone calls the Foxes’ phone and Bruce hears the word _fire_. He knows his father cries - he’s not sure that his mother does because it’s Lucius who says _something has happened_ and has a look that says he thinks he knows more about this then Bruce does.

Maybe he does, but that’s not the point, really.

The point is that Wayne Manor is on fire.

* * *

One day, Tamara Fox will be one of the smartest people in Gotham.

It’s not necessarily destiny - more of a fact. It’s built into her like cleography on the lines of her heart, like silk in the marrow of her bones; it is an addition, a bonus, it is a work of art but also a part of who she is.

She will be beauty and wits and a good soul.

But for now, she is two years old. By the time she is all these things, she will think of Gotham as a battleground. By the time she is old enough to remember her childhood, she will have forgotten ever meeting a Bruce that thought he knew peace.

She won’t find peace herself. Because time, because fire, because _people_ ; they take and they take and they eat all that was once good.

Peace is a fuel, a feast for the damned, and Gotham is _starving_.

* * *

Of his family, as terrible as it sounds, Bruce had always expected his mother to be the weaker one. This has nothing to do with her spitfire spirit or strong will; instead, it has everything to do with him.

Or he thinks it does. Bruce will be almost sixteen before he realises that there is a very big difference between people saying _since the baby_ and _since Bruce was born_.

Martha Wayne’s personality could best be described as tenacious, and it’s a trait he has inherited as well. Her _body_ could best be described as sickened.

Nobody’s ever really explained it to him - he suspects they’re waiting until he’s older or for him to ask - but he knows she isn’t well. Her life has been spent half in bed, too much fire in her eyes and not enough in her limbs. Bruce has heard a dozen specialists whisper _this just happens sometimes_ and _there is nothing we can do_. He has heard a hundred members of the house’s staff murmur _she’s been like that since the baby_ , he has heard a thousand visitors hiss where they think he can’t hear of _poor Thomas, stuck with such a poor wife._

Bruce has spent half a lifetime sitting on the bed beside his mother, reading together, talking about their days, watching the television, listening to the radio. His mother has always been smart and she had taught him about the world without either of them going out to see it. Politics are learned and mastered, homework from the tutors always done on time. A question to her has never gone unanswered and by the time he’s six, he’s old enough to know that she knows just as much about medicine as his father.

The connection he doesn’t make when he’s six is that her medical knowledge is _just_ as much as his father’s, that his mother always said she met Thomas while he was in university, that his father didn’t actually graduate until after Bruce was born. The connection he will make when he’s twelve is that Martha Wayne  née Kane was in university and if _the baby_ hadn’t come along, his mother would have been a doctor. If she’d never been pregnant, she’d have never gotten sick. If he hadn't been born, just maybe she would have had the life she wanted.

His mother is mighty in spirit, but it doesn’t change that he’s seen her drop to the floor more times then he can be remember to count. It doesn’t change the shaking and the naps that last too long and so many little things that he can’t find the words for.

He thought - and it guilts him that he did at all - that the first to break, out of all of them, the first to fall (to depression, to heartbreak, to death) would be Martha Wayne.

But he’s wrong.

Bruce knows less about his father. Thomas Wayne has tried his best to be there, but long hours and longer days have kept him wrist deep in blood and soul, and the sorrowful cry of Gotham has called him away again and again. Thomas got a double helping of intelligence and three times as much compassion in life and not enough of everything else.

The most important thing Bruce learns from his father is that it is entirely possible to care too much.

It’s Lucius who tells him _Wayne Manor is on fire_ and the reason his parents don’t do so is because this is the end for Thomas Wayne.

It’s Frank who drives them to the police station. The Foxes offer to watch the children, but Bruce pushes himself into the car anyway, and his mother lets him with a hard, hollow look in her eyes.

He wonders what she knows about homes destroyed, but chooses not to ask and manages to lose the only chance he’ll get to do so.

It’s Martha that leads his father into the station, makes them all listen to a sober woman tell them _the neighbours saw the smoke_ and _the fire’s been going too long already_.

It’s Thomas who sits on a bench and _breaks_ , over and over and over again. It’s the most terrifying thing Bruce’s ever seen, like someone taking a hammer to glass and grinding their heels into the shards to crush them further.

Except that glass is his father, it’s the one guarantee Thomas had out of life - _you can always go home_ \- literally going up in smoke. It’s the blood in Thomas’ veins; three hundred years of Wayne history sliding through his fingers before he can manage to catch it all. It’s his childhood and Bruce’s too, destroyed and left to dust and ash.

This is a man that’s seen more death in a few years than most will see in a lifetime. This is a man that knows of the war that takes place inside an operation room and the human body. This is a man that has destroyed to save - he knows the smell of blood and the feeling of flesh giving way, but he has not once broken from any of it.

But he breaks at this and it breaks Bruce’s heart too, to see such pain and not only that but also the strange looks his father is getting. People stare with sadness, annoyance and disgust marring their faces as Thomas tries to keep it all together and it makes Bruce want to _scream_ , that they have so little respect for grief.

Bruce watches his mother wrap her arms around his father with a foreign tenderness, her eyes wide with shock and a delicate but strong hand cradling his head as he shakes to pieces on her shoulder. Frank is mumbling awkwardly to an officer that has drawn him to the side.

Nobody notices Bruce and it makes him feel small. Like someone’s cut away the meaty bits and stored what’s left of him in a jar. He wants to _go home_.

 _Except you can’t do that now_ , hisses a voice that sounds like the bastardized version of Thomas Elliot -all sharp edges too close to bare skin-, the mayor Harrison Gibbs -too much touching at too many parties- and his mother’s mother Eva Kane, who was just downright _cruel_.

“... _we’re coming to you live from the Palisades, where a massive fire is consuming the Wayne Manor-_ ” Someone, no doubt thinking they were doing the family a favour, clicked off the television in the corner, cutting off the footage from the local news station’s helicopter of the burning house.

It had only been a few seconds, if that, but the blazing skeleton of stone and wood that had been on the screen shook him to the core. He knew Lucius had said it was a big one and that they wouldn’t be able to go home for a while but that didn’t look anything like _a while_ , that looked like _forever_.

His fingers go to the wall behind him and he presses himself against old brick, trying to steel himself against the stone. He can’t afford to lose it, not here, not _now_.

His father needs his mother and his uncle doesn’t know what to do and Kate’s back at the Foxes’ apartment and he has nobody, no one, and the world is _shattering_ , for the second, third or fourth time, he can’t remember.

“That was no fire!”

The familiar voice jolts Bruce out of his internal dialogue, the faint shivers that are plaguing his body fading away out of a comfort that makes him want to slump onto the floor.

Alfred Pennyworth comes storming into the precinct with a furious expression on his face, looking not a stitch the worse for wear. He is still dressed in what he’d been wearing when he’d left this morning to talk to various friends of the family, and judging by his un-singed attire, he hadn’t been anywhere near the fire.

Surprisingly, coming up behind him are two more cops, dragging two men in handcuffs between them. They _do_ look like they’d at least taken a hit or two and at least one of them is swearing.

Bruce catches the larger one yelling something about _rich shits don’t deserve it anyway_ and a horrible feeling starts to settle in his chest as the group sweeps right past his hiding spot.

He can smell an awful combination of hot tar and gasoline coating the arrested men and Alfred confirms this a moment later when he stabs a finger in their direction as he yells.

“This was _arson_ ,” he cries, rage predominate on his face. “I caught these two and one other escaping the crime scene, I know the sound of explosives, this was _purposeful_!”

Half of the precinct freezes at the noise, the looks of annoyance or concern giving ways to mixed horror or terror. For a moment, nobody moves before everything breaks apart with a burst of noise.

Bruce can hear people talking, but everything is blending into a muted roar of people who think they care and his head hurts so much his vision is starting to go fuzzy.

He is a Wayne, they are the first and last defence against too many things to name, he is bravery and strength and so many other things brought into form, he is history and the future, and perhaps none of these things but this is what he has been _taught_ , and he is quite suddenly on the floor.

It was more of a controlled slide then a fall, but he is without a doubt now slumped against the wall, mostly on the cool tile and struggling to breathe right.

Nobody pays any attention; it's half their natural instincts -they care far more about their jobs then they do people and they don't care that much for duties either- and half a desire to not have to be the one to confront a crying child.

Bruce is good at not being seen - he'd started to learn at Kane family functions where escaping the twittering clutches of relatives had been a required skill and had perfected it at Wayne parties and dinners that were full of people he'd rather not meet, ever. Sitting on the floor, his arms wrapped around his knees and his face buried away from prying eyes, he weeps.

And nobody cares.

* * *

When Bruce was six years old, in early April, part of the Wayne Manor’s extensive lawn decided it didn't want to be a lawn anymore and disappeared out from under his feet.

It was a little bit more complicated than that. While Bruce had no memories of it, it was not the first time the dirt above the estate’s natural cave systems had collapsed into dark holes or hidden rivers. In this case, the particularly wet spring of 1980 had loosened enough already unstable earth that when Bruce ran through the northern rose garden, chasing a pair of robins, the roots of the surrounding bushes and trees were not strong enough to keep a grip.

Several hundred pounds of dirt, a nice patch of wet grass and one small boy was too much weight to be kept up, and with barely a sound, it all collapsed, taking Bruce with it.

He shrieked, more surprised then anything else, at least until his body hit the ground a moment later. He heard the crack of something in his leg or ankle breaking, and the pain swept through a moment later, though it was almost overshadowed by the impact of the ground, and the heavy weight of the remaining dirt, rocks and roots landing mostly on top of him.

He hadn’t known pain this intense before and it took a moment for the initial wave to subside, by which point the lawn had decided it was done. It took a moment longer for the feeling of being exposed to a new reality - or at least a new part of an old one - to subside.

The sky was pale and grey above his head, framed by wet dirt and dark rock. His back and his leg were twisted painfully from his landing and his ears were ringing. He sucked a shaking breath through his teeth and tried to move, crying out again when his frail body protested. His throat felt choked and he had no idea if there was even enough air left in his lungs to call for help.

Somewhere behind him, something rustled.

Bruce considered the possibilities. He'd read a lot of books, after all, and while mother had said there were no tigers in New Jersey, she also spent most of her time indoors and it was entirely possible that she was misinformed of the state’s native child-eating animal population.

At least death by tiger was the sort of things stories were written about. That would show Tommy Elliot, nothing interesting about him _indeed_.

The rustling intensified, and began to sound more like a lot of somethings instead of a larger, single something. A pride of cave-dwelling lions, perhaps? That would certainly be an interesting contribution to research, even if he was eaten.

But any thoughts of big cats were overwritten by a series of squeaks that made him feel oddly disappointed because there was nothing interesting about a whole bunch of mice-

And then the colony of bats hit him.

It was an instantaneous drowning sensation, hundreds of little, leathery bodies slamming into him in their desperate bid to make for the sky. He couldn't even get enough air to scream, so total was his submergence in the wave. He could feel thin wings slice his bare skin and small bodies collide into his back and sides with surprising force. Tiny claws dug through his sweater and pricked him as they climbed over him.

He felt fur and leather crawl across his hands and finally, he could yell; a pitching scream that must have drawn his family as much as the emergence of the colony. Somewhere between his throat beginning to hurt and the last of the bats tearing themselves through the hole, he felt hands grab him.

It took a moment of someone shaking him for his screams to cut off and reality to return from wherever it had fled to. His father was shushing him, a steady hand combing through his hair and Alfred was on the other side, sweeping away dirt so they could unbury him.

“Bruce, it's okay, I swear, it's just a broken bone, it'll heal.”

“The-th, _bats_.” Bruce croaked out in a trembling voice.

“They're all gone, you just startled them,” his father soothed.

Alfred made a noise and Bruce felt stronger hands pry at his fingers.

“Bruce, open your hand, alright? We just need you to let go.”

He wasn't sure who said it, but it did make him look down. His left hand was clenched into a fist and clutched between trembling fingers was one of the tiny creatures, so still it almost looked dead.

He hadn't realized he had grabbed one and he wasn't even sure it was still alive, but as he watched, it turned its head, ears twitching.

It looked right at him and its eyes were a solid yellow, so bright they glowed.

With a cry, Bruce flung his hand into the air and the bat swept its wings open as he let go, taking off into the air to join the rest of the colony.

In the time it took Bruce to blink, it was gone.

“There's a good lad,” Alfred murmured, “Just sit tight, alright?”

He felt them lift him, and with some difficulty, they began to climb out. Apparently the hole wasn't nearly as deep as it had looked to him.

“Did you see it's eyes?” Bruce asked into the shoulder of his father’s jacket. “They were so weird.”

“Lots of animals have black eyes, Bruce,” his father answered, having not seen the creature’s gaze. “It's perfectly normal.”

It took him two and a half months for his leg to heal and for the nightmares and day terrors to slow, ease and stop. The thought of the yellow-eyed bat haunted Bruce throughout most of it, but he did not see one like it in the books he read to alleviate his fears, on the faces of the creatures that still flew past his window every night after or in the bats his parents took him to see at a vet clinic when he couldn't stop dreaming of them.

Slowly, he began to think he had imagined the beast with the yellow eyes.

After all, bats were harmless, no matter how much he now feared them. They did not look, they did not _act_ like that. It must have been something else; anything else.

Surely he had imagined it.

* * *

Bruce at eight had since matured, perhaps more than he should have, as children who go through terrifying situations often do. He knew now that there wasn't really any tigers in New Jersey and any thought of bats with yellow eyes had faded into the background, becoming little more than the occasional visitor in half-forgotten dreams. At some point of his seventh year, any childish nature he had held onto had begun to shed, to be replaced with that solid Wayne confidence.

It didn't disturb him, though he knew it had worried his mother, who had told him quietly that it was okay to be smart and still be a child, that she hadn't even started to feel like a grown-up until after her bat mitzvah at the very least. His father, on the other hand, had laughed and told him that the Wayne family had never been one for childhood and that every relative he'd ever known or heard of had begun to grow up before their tenth birthday.

It had made things easier at the time, to adapt to new knowledge and responsibilities as his desire to learn about them came, to put children's things away and focus on the future in a way that felt foreign, but good. It left most of the younger adults his parents knew very confused, but anyone old enough to remember Thomas Wayne at that age had just accepted it. Such, it seemed, was the way of his family.

Bruce had _felt_ grown-up, or as grown up as he thought it could get at that age. And it wasn't until he was sitting on the precinct floor that he understood with a growing horror that they had no money, no home and no real way to get either of these things.

He had the horrible, horrible feeling that he was not nearly as grown-up as he was about to become.

He wasn't uneducated in these sorts of things. This was what his parents worked to prevent. How many people had he met in his short life, who had lived and were living like they were about to? How many lives were not even surviving because they couldn't feed themselves? How many statistics on _poverty_ and _homelessness_ could he yell out with a split-second’s notice?

How had he never known how terrifying and awful this actually was? And on top of all of this, he still didn't understand why, he didn't understand how it had come to here, on cold tile with cold bones.

 _What did you think was going to happen?_ The voice from earlier - the one that sounded too much like bad things and worse people - lingered at the edge of his thoughts. It brought with it fears and terrors and a sense of loss and hopelessness and he felt himself begin to shake, tremors threatening to unscrew his joints and scatter the parts of a whole into nothing but disassembled pieces.

 _This won't be fixed_.

He isn't sure what brought the thought into his head, but the minute it slides in, following a mute moan of _what are we going to do_ , he can't think of anything else. He has spent the past few weeks in a haze of waiting, waiting for things to be fixed and everything to go back to normal. And it had never occurred to him that perhaps it _wouldn't._

This is not a broken leg, waiting for a cast to come off. This is not the electricity, waiting for the money to come so it could be turned back on.

This is fire. This is nothingness. It has swallowed all that existed of a normal life and left nothing behind. And none of these things will listen to a boy like him. He had spent all this time, asking quietly, begging, praying to the night sky, to people who wouldn't listen and to his mother’s God, because she wasn't going to, to just let everything go back to normal.

Instead, it had just been made worse.

There may have been a lesson there - perhaps someone older, wiser, would have understood what was happening better; they might have understood that all of this was because of _people_.

And to some extent, so did Bruce. But he also knew this; praying was never going to save him.

* * *

But then again. One should never say never.

* * *

By age sixteen, Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne will be able to say all they need to in less than a minute. They have had a lot of time to practice, after all.

So when Selina is thirteen - wild and young and starting to go feral, as children like her sometimes do - she will turn to Bruce, scraping by at fourteen, already too busy mourning the loss of his fifth and final guardian and ask simply this;

“When did you learn that you had to rely on yourself?”

Bruce has learned more than he had ever needed or wanted to know and has so much left to learn that he just wants to lay down and sleep forever, rather than study it all, but he does not need to think of when or why to answer this question.

“Eight,” he murmurs to sickly hot summer air and he thinks of cool tile.

* * *

Bruce does not meet Selina in 1982, so it's not her he thinks of, when he pulls himself to his feet long after his legs have begun to cramp.

Instead, it's Alfred.

Hunger drives him up, with it now being near some time that may have been noon or thereabouts. He’s watched his mother, Frank, and Alfred fill out more paperwork than he's ever seen in his life and listened to people talk about Alfred using the family car to shoulder-check the get-away van of the arsonists into the ditch. The third conspiracier turns up after the hospital releases him - apparently he had been in the driver’s seat and had taken the force of the crash - and all three are booked, charged and sent somewhere to wait for a trial in an unusually quick and efficient display of bureaucracy.

He thinks there is even a confession, but confirming that would require talking to someone, and he doesn't think he has it in him right now to ask. Everything is too bright and too sharp, but the thing is that while this is painful and strange and _awful,_ it has not killed him yet and does not appear to be trying.

Small mercies.

Bruce still doesn't want to talk to anyone, but he remembers a therapist who works at his father’s hospital telling so many patients that routine is the best for healing, and he knows he needs to find something eat. In this, he seeks out Alfred to ask something of him - Alfred will know what he needs, and Bruce knows his mother is too busy trying to organize everything anyway, his uncle Frank has never been one for children, and his father seems to just be sitting in someone's office. Bruce catches a glimpse of Thomas as he walks past, numbly clutching an abandoned cup of coffee and staring at the floor. He looks away quickly and tries not to think about it.

Adults aren't suppose to _act_ like that.

He rightfully guesses which office Alfred is in, having seen him go in there awhile ago. Surprisingly, he can hear his mother’s voice as well, though he thought she had gone to the other side of the building to talk to someone else. Bruce pauses outside the door, considering whether or not to bother them both.

“-I would need to be there by tomorrow.” Alfred's voice is thick with guilt and grief and something twists painfully in Bruce’s chest. He'd always been told not to eavesdrop, but the urge is so strong that he doesn't even think of what he’s been told as he leans closer.

“I understand,” his mother replies, a hint of resignation colouring her tone. “As poor as the circumstances are, it may be for the best.”

A prickle of unease crawls down Bruce’s spine.

“She’s already booked a plane ticket. It... leaves in a few hours,” Alfred was half-whispering to Bruce’s mother. “I should have enough money to buy some replacement things and make it to London.”

Logistically - Bruce realises, in the span of perhaps a few seconds - it makes sense. They do not have a home anymore for Alfred to care for. They have nowhere for him to live. They don’t have money to pay him to do a job he is now unable to do.

Logistically, it makes sense for Alfred to go.

But the logistics of it vanish in a wave of _hurt_ that buries itself in his heart a moment later and suddenly he can barely stand up, his knees too weak to keep up a body that doesn’t know how much more it can take.

His father has checked out, he doubts his mother can stand for much longer and now the third parent he’s quietly loved in his own way for the entirety of a short life is- is…

It’s rage that locks his knees, that pushes life back into shaking muscle and it’s so easy to push the door aside without even a knock with this _fury_ burning in his bones. It’s easy to look them both in the face and _demand_ because this is his life too and nobody’s told him _anything_.

He opens his mouth to spit poison and what comes out is cracked and choked and far too young. “You’re _leaving_.”

There is conflict on Alfred’s face, the look of a man that wants to spare a child some pain, and has no way of doing so now. Maybe there is pain too, but Bruce finds he doesn’t care.

“Yes, he is,” his mother says, looking as if she no longer has the strength to be kind in this. “A... family member of his is in the hospital, and he’s going to go visit her.”

There’s something there that nobody is telling him, but it gets brushed aside in a mind that can barely focus on anything.

“You’re leaving,” he tries to demand of Alfred, but the words come out flat and small.

“Not for long.” Alfred drops to his knees, trying to look Bruce in the eye, even though neither of them want to, trying to look like this is no big deal, even though it is. “I know everything is very confusing, but I need to go help for a bit. Your parents have the number you can reach me at and they’ll call me when everything’s sorted. I’ll be back in a few weeks, or a month or two at most.” He smiles, a strangely old expression on a young face. “You’ll barely have time to miss me.”

He pats Bruce’s shoulder in the same manner he’s done since Bruce was tall enough for the man to reach, and then with an ease that feels like a betrayal, Alfred leaves.

Bruce doesn’t watch him go.


End file.
